Payments Strategy Show

The episode delivers a handful of genuinely quantified benchmarks (adoption gap, cohort comparisons, take-rate by leadership structure) that advance beyond pure anecdote, but the overall density is diluted by lengthy mutual validation, repetition of conclusions, and stretches of 'that tracks with my experience.' The data is real but not surprising.

“78% of the platforms who responded are targeting a 71% adoption rate or greater in the next 12 to 24 months. But only 25% of respondents are currently performing at that level.”

“for that scaling cohort, median adoption was at 63%, attach was at 78% and active adoption was 63%. For the optimized cohort of the same age, we're looking at about 15 percentage points higher across all the benchmarks.”

The benchmarking study itself is a genuine contribution - claimed first-of-its-kind - but every headline finding (integration depth matters, C-suite leaders outperform, early attach rate optimization compounds favorably) confirms conventional embedded-payments wisdom rather than challenging it. No contrarian or counterintuitive arguments are advanced.

“you think about the mind body experience or the toast experience where payments is so integral to the product that a yoga studio owner or a restaurant owner cannot even imagine using that core product without using payments”

“adoption is a team sport. It require coordination. This coordinated effort from product engineering, marketing, sales success, operations.”

Brooke Smith is an internal Rainforest researcher with evident analytical rigor and genuine familiarity with the data, but she is not a named external practitioner who has scaled an embedded-payments program at a notable company. The host is a credible founder but is interviewing his own employee about his own firm's report, limiting the independent expertise on display.

“Brooke Smith, who led our 2026 vertical SaaS embedded payments benchmarking study”

“I've been in payments almost 20 years and have yet to see anything that comes even close to both the depth and the breadth of this benchmark.”

The benchmarking data supplies concrete percentages, basis-point figures, and cohort breakdowns that a practitioner can directly compare against, and the Mind Body/Toast examples anchor the integration-depth discussion. Weaknesses include the vague 'hundreds of vertical SaaS platforms' sample size, thin methodology detail, and an absence of named company case studies or dollar-figure outcomes.

“Emerging platforms had a median attach rate of just 33%, um, versus scaling platforms at 63% and optimized, of course, at 93%.”

“their median take rate is over 90 basis points. And at the median, they're earning 35% of their total revenue from payments.”

This is a founder interviewing his own employee about his own company's report; almost every question is a softball setup and every answer is met with enthusiastic agreement. There is no methodological pushback, no devil's advocate questioning, and no productive disagreement throughout the 27 minutes.

“I would definitely say it tracks well.”

“That's really significant. I mean a couple things. One, I 100% agree”